"Valve Corporation has today rolled out their Steam Mac OS X client to the general public and confirmed something we have been reporting for two years: the Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine are coming to Linux. This news is coming days after we discovered proof in Steam's Mac OS X Client of Linux support and subsequently found more Linux references and even the unreleased Steam Linux client. The day has finally come and Linux gamers around the world have a reason to rejoice, as this is the biggest news for the Linux gaming community that sees very few tier-one titles." This means Linux users can finally enjoy two of the best games in recent years: Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. BOOMER!

I'm pretty sure this is the main motivation for Valve releasing Steam for Mac and Linux. Perhaps they saw how well Blizzard's games have done on the Mac and are trying to get in on that action.

Whatever the reason, I'm just glad they did it. By the way, Portal is available for free until May 24th via Steam; I'm downloading it now so I can finally see what all the fuss was about. (And whether the cake truly is a lie...)

Expect Portal to stop working on May 25th, if that wasn't clear.

I'm pleased that Valve is going beyond the Windows world. If more companies see opportunities to grow, they might follow.

I saw some Mac user complaining somewhere else that Valve's whole library wasn't completely available on launch. It reminded me why we have software developers and construction workers. (Each kind of work is harder to do by the other.)